SCR Associate Editor Will Cathcart graduated from Clemson University with an English major in 2005 and then quickly moved into the world of journalism, becoming one of the first American journalists to interview the president of the Republic of Georgia following Russia’s invasion of the country in 2008. Will stayed on in Georgia as media advisor to President Mikheil Saakashvili, at the same time contributing news and feature stories to such news outlets as CNN and The Daily Beast. He contributed reporting from Ukraine following the Russian invasion in 2022. Born with cystic fibrosis, Will has also written about the healthcare system and the availability of life-saving prescription drugs.
All of these experiences, plus a lot more (such as the theft of Frederic Chopin’s heart) have worked their way into his first novel, This is How People Die, now available from Evening Post Books. SCR Assistant Editor Rylee Cowan interviewed him via email about his entrance into the world of fiction and other topics.
Rylee Cowan: As someone with a journalism background, how do you navigate the line between factual responsibility and creative freedom when writing a novel?
Will Cathcart: No matter what I’m reporting on, the best way to get readers to engage is to tell a story. As a journalist, I hope to tell the story, and those kind of deep dives are what I have always found most compelling. The best stories are the kind where I go in thinking it’s going to be one thing, and the world gets turned upside down and reverses all my preconceptions. What is most important is following the facts wherever they lead you, whether your editor or readers will like it or not. The story is there, and you have to find it and then dig deeper. Sometimes, when you get close enough, the story finds you.
Though journalists are not meant to become part of the story, when reporting on a conflict, often the best way to tell that story is from your own point of view. To pull this off, you have to understand the situation and the facts, seeing the thing from all angles. Even then, you are taking a risk by telling your experience of it. And yet, this is often the most powerful way to tell a story if your readers trust you and if you respect their intelligence. The reason this kind of storytelling has always interested me is because I was a writer long before I became a journalist. I think journalism needs all types: investigators, scientists, lawyers, financial specialists, programmers, data analysts, and so forth. I’m a writer. While a lot of things can be learned, the writing is obviously fundamental to journalism, and that goes for most mediums.
So for me, the transition to fiction has been natural. Instead of following the story, you begin with that story, or at least an idea or something you have no choice but to say. I’m also fascinated by creative nonfiction which subverts that binary when the story is told so well it transcends nonfiction while remaining true. I’m thinking of Benjamín Labatut’s When We Cease to Understand the World. Candice Millard’s work comes to mind. Also, Merlin Sheldrake’s absolutely brilliant book on fungi, Entangled Life, and The Book of Eels by Patrik Svensson, both of which read more like poetry than scientific literature. And then there’s Karl Ove Knausgård, though he is his own can of worms. To go back to your original question, I guess the best journalism tells a story that defies belief and the best fiction is a story that is true, though the facts aren’t.
RC: You chose to publish through an independent press in Charleston—what does that allow you to do with your story that a larger publisher might not?
WC: I was very lucky to find Evening Post Books when I did. They had hired some really bright people who are more interested in fiction and stories that might come from the region but speak to everyone. Honestly, I can’t believe they allowed me to publish certain sections of This Is How People Die. Because they understood what I was doing and were willing to take a risk on this book, I wasn’t forced to compromise my vision. I don’t think that would have happened with a larger publisher for a number of reasons, but mainly a lack of appetite for risk, especially in a debut novel. An indie press in a place like Charleston with a very dark history—and modern Charleston is a reaction to that history—offers a unique “literary home” for stories that are deeply rooted in place but global in their themes.
Not only does the novel feature George Sand delivering 19th-century narration, the book is full of sex, drugs, and Chopin. Entire sections are devoted to Bob Flanagan, a subversive sadomasochism performance artist who explored living with cystic fibrosis and became well known in LA in the 1980s and 1990s. Bob and his partner, the artist Sheree Rose, put his own self mutilation and various flavors of BDSM on display. The Nine Inch Nails video for the song “Happiness in Slavery” is just Bob strapped nude to a table being mutilated by a machine.
And yet, none of his work was for shock value. Bob was born in 1952 with CF. Both of his sisters died from it. Somehow he lived to the age of 43, which was almost impossible for the time. His body put him through hell and he saw sadomasochism as a way of fighting back and subverting his own pain. Because of this, he lived decades longer than he should have. It wasn’t just about pain; it was his art that kept him going as a way to reclaim agency, perhaps even over his own death.
I was born in 1982, and growing up with CF, there were no role models with the disease. No one had survived it and done anything except for Bob. He was part of the story I wanted to tell, and the characters I wanted to show who attempt to claw back their agency by stealing Chopin’s heart and defying not just the modern world, but centuries of horrible men who attempted to appropriate Chopin’s music by stealing his heart. Evening Post Books let me tell that story. And I still can’t believe they let me do it. But don’t tell them that. I think of that Nick Lowe song that Wilco covered, “I Love My Label.” Well, I love my publisher.
RC: While working in Georgia, what surprised you most about how communication functions between government, media, and public perception?
WC: Honestly, the whole system is a disaster. For me, Georgia has always been a highly focused microcosm of where the US might end up politically. Russia has been invading this land since long before Georgia existed. Russia’s entire national identity was forged by invasions of smaller territories and then countries. Georgia has defined itself by resisting not just those Russian invasions, but Ottoman, Persian, and so forth. The Georgian people are fiercely independent. The Georgian government is not. It wasn’t always this way, but in the last decade, an oligarch with pro-Kremlin sympathies and Russian financial holdings came into power on a wave of populism and has been dismantling the courts, the culture, the history taught in schools, the rule of law, freedom of the press, and, as of 2024, free and fair elections. Sound familiar?
I first came to Georgia in 2008 with a theory that Russia would invade. A lot of very intelligent people were telling me it was going to happen, but the world would not listen. Three weeks later Russia invaded Georgia. A year or so later I moved here, and this country has been a lens into trends in the region, into how Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin operates, and, unfortunately, into how democracy is disassembled. What surprised me is how quickly and comprehensively those in power can hijack a narrative, take over TV channels, and wage war on the press without consequences, even while more than half of the country still thinks it is living in a democracy and wants to be part of both the EU and NATO.
Democracy is a fragile thing and I fear we in the US took it for granted for far too long by voting for perceived financial benefit over the strengthening of institutions. That doesn’t end well. A lot of my Georgian friends in the opposition are now in prison simply for demonstrating against the ruling party and its far right populist agenda. Their political party is now illegal. The recent Hungarian election that booted out Viktor Orbán gives me some hope, but Hungary is a European country with EU guard rails. Georgia is not. And the United States is not. Here in Georgia, all of this began with demonizing the press.
RC: Was there a specific experience in Georgia that changed how you think about diplomacy or institutional trust? Does this impact your narrative view in any way?
WC: The Russian invasion of Georgia in 2008 changed my life. I was thrust into the midst of Russia’s evolving geopolitical statecraft that led to the 2013 Euromaidan protests in Kyiv and culminated with the re-invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Now, Putin’s Russia may end on a Ukrainian battlefield. But what changed everything was the choice of the Ukrainian people to fight back.
The US didn’t provide enough support for them to win, and, ironically, Ukraine became stronger for it. Soon they won’t need certain prominent republicans who are blaming Ukraine for Russia’s invasion. The future of Europe will be made or broken on a Ukrainian battlefield in the coming months. If Ukraine prevails, it could lead to democracy here in Georgia, strengthen Europe, and possibly prevent a much larger conflict. If Russia prevails, which now seems unlikely, it will be the beginning of a very dark period at a time when the US is turning its back on European allies.
RC: How has living with CF shaped the way you think? Was there a moment during treatment or recovery where you felt your understanding of your own body fundamentally shift?
WC: Like the protagonists of my novel, I was diagnosed with the genetic condition cystic fibrosis at a very young age. I wasn’t supposed to live past 10 years old. I got lucky and made it to my late 20s. I had a very carpe diem approach to life and, as a result, I recklessly covered armed conflicts and took absurd risks. Just when the disease was catching up with me, a miracle drug with a price from hell ($360k a year) developed by Vertex Pharmaceuticals changed everything. In a matter of days, I went from dying to coming back alive. My symptoms began to reverse.
I suddenly came to terms with the fact that I have a life ahead of me, and that fellow CF patients I had known and loved, children who deserved to be alive, would be left behind. Meanwhile, I, who had never been too hung up on survival and hence felt at home in war zones, didn’t deserve to be here. And yet here I was.
I suppose this survivor’s guilt made the novel and its characters haunt me. The book would have been much easier not to write. But that’s not how it works. Instead, I set out to write the book that I would have wanted to read when my health was at its worst and when gritty, dark literature kept me going. There were so many moments when I thought this book would not happen, and there’s nothing new there. But I either needed to end this book, or it was going to end me. A lot of stuff happened while I was writing it. I covered wars and became a father, but the novel was always there demanding to be told. This Is How People Die is me telling it.
